Thus Dr. Brown was all things to all men, and to all boys. He
"had a word for every one," as poor people say, and a word to the point,
for he was as much at home with the shepherd on the hills, or with the
angler between Hollylea and Clovenfords, as with the dusty book-hunter,
or the doggy young Border yeoman, or the child who asked him to "draw her
a picture," or the friend of genius famous through all the world,
Thackeray, when he "spoke, as he seldom did, of divine things."
Three volumes of essays are all that Dr. Brown has left in the way of
compositions: a light, but imperishable literary baggage. His studies
are usually derived from personal experience, which he reproduced with
singular geniality and simplicity, or they are drawn from the tradition
of the elders, the reminiscences of long-lived Scotch people, who,
themselves, had listened attentively to those who went before them. Since
Scott, these ancient ladies with wonderful memories have had no such
attentive listener or appreciative reporter as Dr. Brown. His paper
called "Mystifications," a narrative of the pranks of Miss Stirling
Graham, is a brief, vivid record of the clever and quaint society of
Scotland sixty years ago. Scotland, or at least Scottish society, is now
only English society--a little narrower, a little prouder, sometimes even
a little duller. But old people of position spoke the old Scotch tongue
sixty years ago, and were full of wonderful genealogies, full of
reminiscences of the "'45," and the adventures of the Jacobites.
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